nd the light fell and grew deeper in tone round us
and the amethystine sea, flushed with colour, swayed and heaved,
murmuring its low eternal song by our side.

A great vulture flapped heavily by and perched on a sand-hill not far
from us, eyeing us somewhat askance, and some sea-gulls circled over
us--otherwise we were undisturbed.

The following day we planned to come down the river Tamesi, which
flows out at Tampico. We could not go up by boat, as the river was in
flood and nothing could make headway against it, but the natives were
adepts at steering a boat down with the rapid current, and knew how to
handle it on the top of the flood.

We took the train some distance up the line, and alighted at a place
where the river flowed by between high banks and where boats could be
had from the villagers.

It was a perfect, cloudless day, and we reached our destination in the
sweet fresh early hours of the morning. A walk through the tiny
Mexican village brought us to the bank of the river where the Tamesi
flowed by, heavily, grandly, in all the majesty of its flood.

The waters were brown and discoloured, but the sun glinting on its
ripples turned them into gold, and the tamarisk on the bank drooped
over it, letting its long strands float on the gliding water.

A little way down the bank, moored to the side, rocked a boat, of
which the outline delighted me, and, to Suzee's annoyance, I stood
still and drew out my note-book to make a sketch of it.

It appeared to be the larger half of one immense tree of which the
inside had all been hollowed out, both ends were raised and pointed
and, in the centre, four bent bamboo poles, inclined together,
supported a finely plaited wicker-work screen, which shielded a patch
about two yards square in the boat from the burning rays of the sun.

I finished the sketch in a few minutes, and we went on towards the
boat; its owners, two Mexican Indians, were sitting on the bank
engaged in mending one of their paddles. They were quite naked except
for their loin cloths, and their bare, brown crouching figures gave
the last touch of suggested savagery to the scene. The red, earthy
banks of the river stretched before us desolate and sunburnt; the
swollen, muddy river itself rolled swiftly and heavily along, silent,
impressive; the dug-out, looking like a craft of primeval times,
rocked and swayed noiselessly on the flood; the naked savages
crouched over their broken paddle beneath the wav